From late 2013 through the early part of this year, researchers noted a spike in campaigns spreading crimeware that targets Windows XP systems. On Tuesday, the Akamai Prolexic Security Engineering and Response Team (PLXsert) detailed the threat on a company blog, and published an advisory on the Storm Network Stress Tester crimeware kit.

According to Akamai, the attack tool offers criminals remote administration capabilities on targeted PCs. PLXsert also noted that the crimeware kit was customized to specifically target vulnerable XP machines in China, but that it was also capable of infecting newer Windows operating systems.

The Storm crimeware kit enables the upload and download of malicious files, the launch of executables, and also notably comes with four distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack vectors, the firm revealed.

“One PC infected by the kit can generate up to 12 Mbps of DDoS attack traffic with a single attack", the blog post said.

"The kit comes pre-programmed to launch four types of DDoS attacks at once, increasing the potential attack volume".